Hey everyone, it’s that time of the month when I’ve made my last few acquisitions and additions to the portfolio. Now it’s time for me to summarize everything that I’ve done in this last month of October. Before you take a look at what I’ve done, just understand that this type of purchasing power is only done with safety nets in place. My wife and I have enough emergency savings to last us 10 months without either of us working so if you don’t have an emergency savings, I don’t recommend doing this much investing.
I did not include my Roth IRA because it’s in mutual funds and I have a financial guy that takes care of that. With that being said, here is a look at the moves I’ve made in the market over this past month of October.
| Ticker | Shares | Average Cost | Totals |
| ABBV | 2 | $86.33 | $172.66 |
| CSCO | 3 | $39.77 | $119.31 |
| CWEN | 5 | $29.62 | $148.10 |
| DUK | 3 | $92.67 | $278.01 |
| IRT | 12 | $11.60 | $139.20 |
| KO | 6 | $50.14 | $300.84 |
| LYB | 2 | $69.01 | $138.02 |
| MAIN | 4 | $30.49 | $121.96 |
| MO | 7 | $39.19 | $274.33 |
| O | 2 | $61.02 | $122.04 |
| PFE | 7 | $36.72 | $257.04 |
| SO | 4 | $58.55 | $234.20 |
| T | 6 | $27.55 | $165.30 |
| VZ | 2 | $57.84 | $115.68 |
| WTRG | 6 | $41.96 | $251.76 |
These are the new additional holdings to the account this month
| Ticker | Shares | Average Cost | Totals |
| AFL | 14 | $33.94 | $475.16 |
| IRM | 20 | $26.29 | $525.80 |
| STX | 10 | $51.61 | $516.10 |
You might be looking at this and realizing that this is more than what I said I would be investing every month. That’s because last month, we had way more in our savings than we needed so I decided to invest it into our dividend account.
As you can see, I don’t try to buy the dips if I can help it. I’m a long term investor. I buy shares based on when the Ex-Dividend dates are and the goal is to grow my portfolio. If I waited for the perfect opportunity to get in the market, I would always be on the sidelines without growing my account.
The strategy I took up this month was trying to get every holding that I have closer to $500. I won’t be doing this in the future, but I just set that little goal for our account and now that I’ve reached it, I’m going to start purchasing additional shares based on when their Ex-Dividend date is. Since I’m not selling my holdings, I’m just going to keep buying and hold.
For November, I’m going to be looking at the following companies with their Ex-Dividends coming up this month:
PFE – 11/5
WTRG – 11/12
DUK – 11/12
SO – 11/13
AFL – 11/17
MAIN – 11/24
KO – 11/30
By the end of the year, I’m trying to hit a number of different milestones for the account.
- Reach Annual Projected Dividend Income of $500. I’m at $474 right now!
- Reach a $10,000 account size. I’m at $8,750 as of the writing of this article!
- Hitting 20 different holdings in my account. I’m currently at 19 and need just 1 more to hit it!
I hope this information helped you out with understanding my strategy as a long term dividend growth investor and hopefully it spurs some motivation for you and your account! Thank you so much for reading along and I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in store for November. I’ll catch you on the next one!
Marcus